“You gave it to him, didn’t you?” Mary spoke accusingly.
“Well, he’s our dad! Whether you want to admit it or not.” Diana crossed her arms and looked petulant.
“So you did! I knew it. As soon as I heard he had escaped from Newgate, I wondered what he could have picked a lock with, small enough to hide from the guards. You must have slipped it to him before you ran off with Charlie, when he was already in handcuffs. It’s your fault a criminal has escaped from prison. It’s your fault a man who is dangerous to the public, and potentially to all of us, is still out there. Don’t you realize—it was his watch fob in Molly Keane’s hand. Adam wasn’t a member of the society. He might have killed her, but our—your—father was just as responsible for her death. He was probably the one who cut out her brain—with a scalpel! Do you even understand what you’ve done?” Mary took her umbrella from the stand, as though she might run Diana through with it. And he may have caused my mother’s death, she did not add. That was not something she wanted to discuss, not yet. Instead she added, although it felt irrelevant now, “It’s your fault we lost even the possibility of a reward for finding the murderer of Sir Danvers Carew.”
“He’s our dad,” said Diana. She looked utterly immovable. Which is how we have learned Diana often looks.
Mary glared at her for a moment, then made the sound a lady makes when she is thoroughly angry. (It’s a sort of low growl.) Clutching her umbrella like a sword, she walked out the door into the rainy London afternoon.
MARY: Do you know what Mr. Holmes said to me in the cab? “Miss Jekyll, I know you and your friends haven’t told me everything. I won’t enquire into your secrets, beyond what is necessary for me to solve the mystery of the Société des Alchimistes. They are safe even from me.”
BEATRICE: That shows he is a gentleman.
CATHERINE: It shows he had already guessed what we weren’t telling him. After all, he’s Sherlock Holmes. And he wanted Mary to understand that he could be trusted. Haven’t you noticed how he is around Mary? Do you seriously think he needed an assistant to organize his files? He wanted to keep her close, that’s what he wanted. For more reasons than one, I’m guessing.
MARY: Why would he want that? Anyway, his files were a complete mess. With the organizational system I devised . . .
CATHERINE: Oh please.
CHAPTER XXI
The Letter from Austria
It was August, three months after the night we had decided to live together at 11 Park Terrace. We were sitting in the parlor with the windows open to let in any breezes that might be flitting around the stagnant streets of London. The weekly meeting of the Athena Club was about to start.
The parlor did not look the way it had three months ago. Justine had painted it yellow, and there was a band of flowers around the top of the wall, close to the ceiling. That had been Beatrice’s idea. She insisted we must do away with the darkness and drab of previous centuries—we must have beauty and light. Also, she liked flowers. So we had yellow and green and blue walls, and the furniture had been re-covered in Indian fabrics, and there were Japanese porcelains on the mantelpiece. She had bought them cheaply at a church rummage sale. She and Mary argued about the expense, but since Beatrice brought in more money than the rest of us, it was only fair that she should spend some on fabric and porcelain if she wanted to. We had to admit that we rather liked her taste, so we let Beatrice decorate and try to talk us into supporting the Labor Movement, Aestheticism, and Rational Dress. Mary retorted that we were conspicuous enough without dressing differently from everyone else, but she had bought a bicycle. Mrs. Poole was scandalized. Those three months had brought certain changes to our household. Justine talked more, although it was usually about the meaning of life. We tended to stop listening when she said “Rousseau” or “Kant.” Surprisingly, Diana was the one who listened to her most often. Sometimes she even tried to read Justine’s books, although we had seen her curled up on the sofa with her head uncomfortably pillowed on the Critique of Judgment. We had taken down the walls between the servants’ rooms on the third floor, and Justine used that space as a studio. The entire third floor smelled of turpentine. She particularly liked to paint flowers, and children, and pastoral scenes. Catherine was working on her first novel, and two short pieces of hers had been published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. During the day, we often heard the click-clack of her typewriter. Beatrice’s plants had taken over the laboratory, spreading over the tables and up the walls. Except for Justine, we only went in there briefly, because the air itself had become poisonous. It would make you start to feel faint, and eventually you would lie down and die. But nothing could harm Justine, so she visited Beatrice whenever she liked.
Every weekday morning, Mary walked across the park to assist Sherlock Holmes. She had, to her great pleasure, participated in solving several mysteries. In “The Case of the Missing Finger,” by Dr. John Watson, published in The Strand, she had even been described as “a young woman of prepossessing appearance.” We were worried that Watson, whose wound was almost completely healed, had developed a secret passion for Beatrice. Whether it was requited or unrequited, we did not know.
BEATRICE: Don’t be silly. He has always been simply a good, kind friend.
Diana continued to be a trial to us all. We were considering poisoning her with one of Beatrice’s concoctions. No, not really, although Catherine swore that if Diana used her typewriter and messed up the ribbon one more time, she would bite that girl through the throat, just wait and see.
DIANA: I would have liked to see you try! You were so annoying, always moaning about how difficult it was to write a novel. And look at you now, Miss Author.
CATHERINE: The first one was hard! Almost as hard as this one . . .
Alice continued to insist that she was only a housemaid and not at all interested in adventures, thank you very much, but she was getting particularly good at Latin, almost as good as Beatrice. And Mrs. Poole was still Mrs. Poole. She would probably never change.
MARY: She never has. She’s still the same Mrs. Poole she’s always been. Only more so.
Since his escape from Newgate, we had not heard of or from Hyde. We assumed he had made it to the continent, where he could stay hidden for years if necessary. Prendick had disappeared as well. To Lestrade’s consternation, the Whitechapel Murders were still considered unsolved, and learned men wrote treatises advancing possible solutions, all of them wrong. We continued to investigate the Société des Alchimistes, although we had not yet found out as much as we would have liked. Our investigations were ongoing.
It was Saturday, the day of our official club meeting. We were all sitting on the sofa or in the armchairs, except Diana, who sat cross-legged on the floor. Even Beatrice was sitting in an armchair rather than by the window, since she was less poisonous now.
DIANA: She’s still poisonous enough!
Mary was presiding. She usually presided over our meetings, although we had no official club president. But she was the best at organizing and keeping us all from talking over one another. As usual, our first order of business was finances. What had we made that week?
Mary: Two pounds.
Justine: Ten pounds from a commissioned portrait. This was not a usual sort of payment and could not be counted on again. But two of her paintings had been accepted into a gallery in Soho.
Beatrice: Five pounds seven shillings.
Catherine: Nothing. She had already received an advance for the novel she was writing, and had no magazine sales to report.
Diana: Nothing, yet. She was trying to persuade Mary that she should become an actress. If Mary would just let her appear at the Alhambra . . . Yes, the girls showed their legs, but so what? We allocated ten minutes for Diana’s arguments, and one minute for Mary to say “No.”
That made a grand total of seventeen pounds, seven shillings for the week. Not bad, much better than we had been doing at first. It was difficult feeding seven mouths and maintaining a large ho
use. But we were managing.
Second order of business: What had we learned about the Alchemical Society? Catherine, who sometimes wrote in the British Library Reading Room, had found mentions of the society in eighteenth-century manuscripts. The society had been less secretive then, and many prominent Englishmen were members, but so far she had found no information on what experiments, if any, they had been conducting. She would continue her research. Mary reported that Dr. Seward was still in Purfleet. Joe, who was watching Seward for us, had told us he was planning on going to Vienna again, but at the last minute the trip had been canceled. Why had Seward canceled his trip? We did not know. It was frustrating knowing so little. Ten minutes for complaints about how little we had discovered so far. Beatrice said it was natural for our investigations to go slowly.
Third order of business: Mrs. Poole had found two stray kittens in the backyard. What should we call them? The names Alpha and Omega were proposed and unanimously approved. We had kittens! Mrs. Poole insisted she was letting them stay only because they would eventually catch mice.
Fourth order of business: Mary said, “I received this letter yesterday. You remember I said there was one person in the world to whom I could recount the events that brought us together? That person was my former governess, Miss Murray. I wrote her a letter several months ago, not knowing she had moved. My letter seems to have been forwarded from address to address, but it finally reached her, and she has written back. I think I’d better read you her response.”
We waited, wondering what the letter was about, knowing Mary would not have told us about it if it were not important. She started reading.
My dear Mary,
I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to respond to your letter. As you can see from my address, I am no longer teaching school in England. To explain why I am in Vienna would take much longer than I have at present. For I, too, have been living an adventurous life, sometimes too adventurous for my taste. It has, strangely enough, intersected with yours in a sense. You will perhaps understand more when you read the enclosed. If I were in a position to help the writer, who is the daughter of a dear friend, I would. But I need to leave Vienna almost immediately. I told her that if she wrote to you, I would forward her appeal—it is the most that is currently in my power. I hope—I very much hope—you can help her. And forgive me for my brevity. I will write more when I can. My love to you, now and always (and I think you need no longer call me Miss Murray).
Mina
“And?” said Catherine. “What is the enclosure?”
Mary stared at a second sheet of paper folded in the first, as though trying to decide what to do with it. But really, she had already decided, or she would not have brought it to our meeting. She began.
Dear Miss Jekyll,
Our mutual friend Miss Murray has told me who you are, and of the Athena Club. You do not know me, but I take the great, the very great, liberty of asking you to help me in my dire need. I am the daughter of Professor Abraham Van Helsing, a doctor and researcher associated with several important universities, in England and on the continent. My father is also a prominent member of a certain Société des Alchimistes. Miss Murray has assured me that you know of this society, and that you and your fellow club members are aware of its activities. I am, against my will and sometimes without my knowledge, the subject of certain experiments carried out by my father. As I result, I am . . . changing. And I am afraid. The one person who could protect me, my mother, is locked away in an asylum for the insane. I am not yet of age, and have no resources of my own or friends to whom I could turn. I do not know what to do. Please, if you can, help me, I beg of you.
Lucinda Van Helsing
Vienna, Austria
For a moment, we were all silent. Then, “Where’s Austria?” asked Diana.
“We wanted to know if they were still making monsters,” said Catherine. “I think we have our answer. The Société des Alchimistes, or at least some of its members, are still experimenting on girls. Lucinda Van Helsing doesn’t tell us how. . . .”
“She may not know herself,” said Justine. “This Professor Van Helsing must be stopped. We cannot allow such experiments to continue. I speak only a little German, but could learn quickly, I think.”
“Austria is near Switzerland,” said Beatrice. “I stayed in Vienna briefly, trying to find a cure for my condition. The nights will be getting cold there, although the days are warmer and sunnier than in London. We shall have to pack sweaters and wool coats.”
“I’ll have to ask Mr. Holmes for some time off,” said Mary. “I think he can survive without an assistant for a while. But this isn’t the sort of thing we can rush into. It must be planned carefully. Has anyone seen the atlas?”
“I was using it to plan Rick Chambers’s escape route,” said Catherine. “I’ll bring it into the dining room. Meet me there in five minutes.”
“You’re not going to leave me behind,” said Diana. “You’re always leaving me behind.”
And then we sat around the large mahogany table: Mary, Diana, Beatrice, Catherine, and Justine. Mapping travel routes, calculating expenses. Planning the future adventures of the Athena Club.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Mary refuses to listen to me, but I am after all the one writing this story (with frequent interruptions), so I’m going to add a note about Mrs. Shelley—also named Mary—and the book she is most famous for writing: Frankenstein, a Biography of the Modern Prometheus. We authors have to stick together, even when one of us is long dead.
(Those of you who are interested only in adventures may wish to ignore this part and go directly to reading one of my other books. I won’t mind.)
Mary says the book is a pack of lies, and accuses Mrs. Shelley of writing it to protect the Société des Alchimistes, as it was constituted in her time. After all, she never mentions the society. She implies that Frankenstein was working entirely unguided and alone, which was not the case. Most readers nowadays assume the book is a work of fiction anyway, as Watson did, but it’s not. Neither is it entirely lies. The early story of Victor Frankenstein is almost entirely accurate, as we know from Justine. Mrs. Shelley fails to mention that as a student at the University of Ingolstadt, Frankenstein was inducted into the Société des Alchimistes by his chemistry professor. We have seen both their names, Victor Frankenstein and Adolphe Waldman, in the records of the society, in Budapest. (To find out how we were able to access those records, read the second in this series of Adventures of the Athena Club.)
MARY: That’s quite clever of you, actually. Making them want to read the second book.
Frankenstein created Adam, as Mrs. Shelley describes. Then, he created Justine. And this is where the biography becomes, as Mary calls it, a pack of lies. It concludes with an implausible and melodramatic chase across the Arctic, with Frankenstein pursuing the monster he created, for “revenge.” Seriously, even I write more believable fiction than that! Those of you who have read the book will have noticed how different those chapters are from the earlier ones, which recount entire conversations verbatim, and describe Frankenstein’s experiments in detail.
To understand her motivations, you have to understand the complicated woman who was Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, only nineteen years old when she started writing the Biography. She was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and one of the few female members of the Société des Alchimistes at that time. She died when Mary was only a child, although we know that Mary identified with her mother and often read her writings. Mary’s father, the political radical William Godwin, was also a member. Mary herself never became a member of the society—we do not know why. Her husband, the poet Percy Shelley, was a member, as were Lord Byron and his friend Dr. John Polidori. Evidently, it was quite fashionable to be a member of the society in the early part of the century. It was not as secretive as it later became, and just scandalous enough to tempt men like Shelley and Byron.
So, think of who was gathered a
t the Villa Diodati that summer in 1816 when Mrs. Shelley began work on the Biography. Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, John Polidori, and Claire Clairmont, Mary’s stepsister, who was pregnant with Byron’s child. About halfway through the summer, they were joined by Polidori’s friend Ernest Frankenstein, Victor’s younger brother and the sole remaining member of the Frankenstein family. It was an unusually wet summer for Switzerland: rain kept the inhabitants of the villa indoors. To pass the time, they told stories, and that was when Mrs. Shelley learned the details of Victor’s life, from Ernest himself. In the records of the society, there is a letter from Ernest to the president of that time. I record here a portion of it:
“Although you will scarcely credit it, Monsieur le Chevalier, the Creature came to me himself to tell me of my brother’s death in Scotland. He gloated over his vile crime, which I did not hesitate to call patricide, and vowed that he would revenge himself upon all the Frankensteins, forever. And upon that she-creature my brother had so unadvisedly made for him. I told him that she was likely dead already, if not of drowning then of exposure and starvation, and indeed I have heard nothing more of her. If I do, I will destroy her myself. Such an abomination should never have been allowed to walk the Earth. It is bad enough that my brother created Adam, but that he would create an Eve both stronger and more clever than man? That should never have been permitted, and if Waldman had known, he would have brought the full wrath of the society down on my unfortunate and misguided brother’s head.”
Ernest knew how his brother had died. He knew about Justine. In that company, among members of the society sworn to secrecy, and Mary Shelley, daughter of trusted members, I believe he revealed the truth. So why did Mrs. Shelley write her book, and knowing the truth, why did she lie?
It must have been, in part, to deflect attention from the society. If Adam appeared in Europe, he would be seen as the creation of a lone university student who had already paid the price for creating a monster. He would not be connected with the Société des Alchimistes.
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter Page 36